The 6 Best Protein Powders Available — and How to Use Them

Protein is one of the many building blocks of life — you need it to bulk up, lose weight and maintain weight. It’s what keeps you fuller for longer, and helps prime your body for repair. It enables you to recover after a hard workout and optimize your training routine. While bodybuilders and gym rats have long taken protein powders, they’re still pretty polarizing. Either you use them, or you don’t. People don’t really dabble in protein powders. What you might not realize is that getting enough protein can be tricky, and protein supplements and powders are an easy way to up the amount of protein you’re getting without having to increase your total consumption levels.

What’s in Protein Powder?

When dipping your toes in the protein powder water, you should know what you’re consuming and how to consume it. “We understand one of the essential amino acids, leucine, is critical as a signal to promote muscle protein synthesis, which is tissue growth and repair,” Dr. Sue Kleiner, a registered dietician, a fellow of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and author of Power Eating, says. Whether you want to build muscle or slim down, protein is essential in your diet. Dr. Kleiner recommends eating protein four to five times a day, as the research shows eating at pulses throughout the day help an average person get the amount they need. If you’re looking to build muscle or bulk up, you should aim for five times a day.

What If I Eat a Lot of Meat?

While aiming to get all of the protein you need from whole foods is best, you can’t always get as much as you need from food alone. Sometimes our bodies just can’t handle eating all that protein. “Everyone can’t necessarily sit down to that kind of meal, or even have the appetite for that, so that’s where using a protein supplement as a snack [comes in].” Ideally, you’re mixing it with some fruit or in a smoothie, but the main draw to protein powder is that it’s more portable and easy to consume.

How Much Protein Should I Aim For?

With each meal or snack, you should aim for 25 to 35 grams of protein at a minimum to sustain your body during hard workouts. “It takes at least 20 grams of whey protein, which has the highest leucine composition, or 25 to 30 grams of whole protein whether you’re eating animal product or plant protein,” Dr. Kleiner says. Most protein powders come with a pre-measured scoop, which likely has at least 20 grams of protein.

Does It Matter When Picking between Whey, Plant and Animal-Based Protein?

When comparing proteins, you can get your necessary 25 grams from one, two or a mix of all three. The catch with plant protein is that “the quality of [plant] protein is lower than animal protein in supporting health, so you need 10 percent more,” Dr. Kleiner says. If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, consuming all-plant protein is sufficient, just be sure to add that extra amount.

What to Look for in a Label

Look for at least two grams of leucine per serving, but you need to be careful when purchasing supplements. “There is a lot of contamination, particularly in the supplement industry channels that focus on bodybuilding, that can be laced with drugs,” Dr. Kleiner warns. “I am adamant about using third-party certified lab products.” Look for NSF for Sport, or BSCG, which is a banned substances control group, or Informed Sport. All of those check for banned substances in supplements.

One of the reasons protein powders can be so polarizing is because there’s no one-size-fits-all. “Your nutrition needs, including how much protein you need, is dependent on many factors: age, gender, weight, activity level, the presence of an injury or a disease, as well as nutrition or fitness goals,” Megan Ostler, MS, RDN of iFit, says. It’s all very individualized.

Buying Guide

We spoke with top nutritionists and sports dieticians to hear what protein powders they recommend. McKel Hill, MS, RDN, LDN and founder of Nutrition Stripped swears by the first three picks on this list. Ostler recommends the iFit Nourish program, a questionnaire that creates the perfect protein mix for you — whether you’re a runner, CrossFitter or yogi.

Thriving Protein by Nutra Organics $40

Pea Protein by Now Sports $17

Nourish by iFit $5+

Cafe Latte by biPro $25

Organic Protein by Tone It Up $48

MySmart Shake Plant Protein Base by USANA $42

Lifestyle Gear Is Changing the Outdoors, but Is It a Good Thing?

From Issue Six of Gear Patrol Magazine.
Discounted domestic shipping + 15% off in the GP store for new subscribers.

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here’s a photograph, now iconic, of hip-hop icons Notorious B.I.G. and Ma$e that was taken during the mid-90s. With heads tilted slightly to the left, just enough to convey the appropriate amount of apathetic defiance, neither is smiling. Their hands are in their pockets, gold chains and medallions are draped around their necks. Their jackets are splayed wide — large and puffy with oversized baffles filled with down insulation. Notorious B.I.G.’s is bright yellow, its brand unidentifiable, but the abstracted Half Dome logo of The North Face is all too plain on Ma$e’s shoulder. It’s the Nuptse, originally released by The North Face in 1992 as a jacket for mountaineering.

Hip-hop artists may have adopted the puffy jacket as a street-worthy status symbol in the 1980s and 1990s, but the original down jacket was all about cold-weather performance. Eddie Bauer began experimenting with quilted down as an alternative to wool after hypothermia brought him a few visible gasps away from death during a winter fishing trip in Washington’s wilderness. Using down to provide warmth in clothing wasn’t a wholly novel idea, but Bauer’s 1936 Skyliner Jacket was the first of its kind. Ripstop nylon shells and water-repellent down, now ethically sourced in most cases, have helped the down jacket become more technical with age, but that hasn’t kept it off the backs of city dwellers who might never lace up a hiking boot — never mind attempt a summit bid of Rainier.

The down jacket has been adored by hip-hop stars and adopted by the everyman for the same reasons it’s loved by mountaineers: it’s lightweight, wind- and water-resistant, and it’s just about the warmest coat money can buy. Down jackets are pure function. But baffles and bright colors, when removed from the woods and peaks and brought into the city, become something else, too: fashionable. Other items created for camping, climbing and skiing haven’t been so readily appropriated beyond the outdoors, but thanks to a handful of forward-thinking, social-media-savvy brands representing a new generation of adventurers, that’s changing — in an era when function is a given, outdoor gear is free to be stylish, versatile, lighthearted and most importantly, inclusive.

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ronically, it was the early gear of the 1970s, now vintage, that inspired Jedd Rose to start Topo Designs in 2008. Rose grew up in rural Wyoming (“It doesn’t even make sense to say that I grew up in a small town ’cause the entire population of Wyoming is like half a million people,” he quips.), hunting, fishing and camping with his dad. It was, he admits, the romantic vision of boyhood in the American wilderness, an upbringing just shy of a Hemingway short story.

Wyoming’s landscape, and the items that Rose used to navigate it, had an impact. “I had a bunch of this old gear that was like Frostline and Gregory and Sierra Designs and original REI Co-op stuff — hand-me-downs from my parents — and that really built my aesthetic,” he says. When Rose set aside a career in medical animations and iOS builds to sew a backpack in his basement, it was those items that guided his mind and needle. “A lot of those brands were really hitting on this perfect, simple, classic look and feel, and at the time it was really cutting edge, but taking it out of that context and moving it thirty years into the future, it still held up,” Rose says.

Topo Designs products are retro, but they’re also decidedly contemporary. Its collection of backpacks, Dopp kits and duffels is characterized by geometric profiles — rectangles, triangles and circles — and bright primary colors. Technical elements such as ice-axe loops, webbing attachments and daisy chains are present but kept to a minimum. The point of these bags is not to conquer a mountain, but to integrate into a multitude of life’s facets: the outdoors, travel, lifestyle. “That’s where we always start,” Rose says, “It’s gotta fit a number of different needs.” Like an abstract painter, Rose’s reaction to the romanticized version of outdoor exploration, one characterized by extreme hardship in brutal environments and technically specialized gear, is best demonstrated through simplicity.

Ten years ago, when Rose created Topo Designs, consumers of outdoor gear weren’t as receptive to the vision of form over function, or even form equal to function, as demonstrated in one of Topo Designs’s earliest products, the Klettersack. “It just has this perfect marriage of classic style, classic elements… it works every day, from going to work to taking it out on the trail to travel,” as Rose describes it. Today, it’s a best seller and one of the staple pieces that Topo Designs keeps in its line every season; it’s also one of the first products that helped the company gain its initial following. But that didn’t happen in the US, it happened in Japan.

Japan has long fostered a market in which lifestyle-oriented outdoor products thrive. In fact, many notable US-based brands, including The North Face, Burton and Gregory, as well as lesser-known names like Datum, continue to produce gear that’s only sold in Japan. Topo Designs never had that intention, but its simple and utilitarian designs attracted the attention of a distributor there who, working with Rose, began selling its products. It wasn’t until later that Topo Designs began to catch on in the United States, first at boutiques in coastal cities like New York and L.A., and then in the mountain towns of the Rockies and other ranges. “We’re not the typical ‘start in your basement, sell it to your friends, sell it in your hometown, sell it to the town next door’ type of business — we started way far away and ended up working our way back,” says Rose.

“What happened, and what still happens all the time in Japan,” Rose continues, “is they really value the craft, simplicity and story behind a product. And simplicity can be paramount over complexity. Which is kind of difficult for us in the US to understand. That something that is stripped down can be more valuable than something that has every single bell and whistle on it.” It’s a view that places import on something other than technical prowess: story.

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enji Wagner is a storyteller. Before founding the outdoor company Poler in 2011, Wagner inhabited the action-sports realm of the industry, making films and shooting photos. Like Rose, it was his father that got him out into the woods and mountains at an early age. As the millennium’s first decade ended, Wagner began to feel that the outdoor industry was lacking something. “I didn’t feel that inspired by any of the brands in the way that I thought was possible,” he says. “It was just way too much focus on technical innovation and sheer engineering brilliance and product innovation rather than storytelling. The reason people are in the industry, and the reason all this gear is being made, is that they’re actually passionate about what they’re doing on the weekend, not because they’re passionate about a particular jacket.”

One of Poler’s first products is the quintessence of what Wagner is referring to. It’s a sleeping bag called the Napsack, which features a hood and a zipper that extends roughly halfway down its front. As stated on Poler’s website, the Napsack “is designed to maximize Camp Vibes and induce a euphoric, funfortable state of mind.” Wagner describes it as the “keystone item” for the brand. Its lower hem is equipped with a drawcord, and its shoulders can be zipped open to allow for the free use of one’s arms. It has pockets, it’s reversible and is available in a variety of prints, from rainbow florals to “shaggy camo.” It’s lighthearted, fun — youthful even. “It’s very rare to have a product that actually captures the spirit of a company,” says Wagner. And he’s right; the Napsack is Poler.

The Napsack is not, however, technical. The sleeping bag wouldn’t be well suited to a hut trip or an expedition, but that’s okay, this was Wagner’s intent. “The Napsack was meant to be something relatable and something like, ‘Hey, that’s fun and silly and still has this kind of spirit of adventure,’” he says. Its ideal uses are camping and couch surfing. “It’s also just kind of goofy and makes you look like a gnome — it’s fun and approachable. Six years ago when we launched, that was a very disruptive idea.”

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opo Designs and Poler addressed a series of issues and tapped into unidentified trends at a time when the outdoor industry was experiencing the growing pains that occur when a younger generation comes into its own. It’s not coincidence that both brands launched and grew parallel with the rise of Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram. Social media not only allowed small brands to grow organically without the need for expensive ad campaigns, it fostered exactly the type of storytelling that Rose and Wagner were craving.

Wagner used social media to launch Poler. Since then, his hashtag, #campvibes, has been used more than 1.5 million times and counting. “It’s kind of our ‘Just Do It,’” he says. Early on, Wagner also established a series of narrative photo essays called “Adventures” — a tact many brands have since replicated — that depict young people on road trips across America, exploring Iceland and camping on the beach in Baja. Napsacks and other Poler gear are the common motif. The images, many of which are shot on film, aren’t heavily composed, which makes each series feel similar to an old family album dug out from under a bed. They’re still romanticized scenes, but they make adventure feel accessible. And it’s just this type of storytelling that’s proven to resonate with the millenials and Generation Xers that are now becoming the biggest group of consumers of outdoor gear.

Older companies have failed to connect with these younger audiences, a result rooted in a lack of approachability. Almost all of them began, and still operate, with mountaineering as their North Star. The North Face was first a specialty mountaineering shop in San Francisco; Yvon Chouinard began what would become Patagonia by forging his own rock- climbing hardware and selling it out of his car; Marmot was an outdoors club that required its initiates to climb a glaciated peak in order to earn admittance. Even as these companies matured and others joined in to make apparel and gear, the message never changed. And as the industry grew, climbers like Ed Viesturs and Conrad Anker became revered athletes plastered on billboards and magazine covers.

That message doesn’t work anymore because most people don’t actually climb high peaks. Or any peaks, for that matter. Rose describes the industry’s traditional beat as focusing on “kind of unattainable aspirational events that you might possibly do in life, but probably not. Like climbing K2 or summiting Everest.” The current cost of a summit bid on the world’s tallest mountain averages around $45,000 — or in other words, just shy of a Chevy Suburban — but can quickly climb above $100,000. Smaller peaks come with less-prohibitive prices, but the heart of the matter is no different: mountaineering is an exclusive and expensive sport.

The new generation of outdoor companies is adjusting. Instead, they focus on van camping, cabin life and global travel. These are pursuits that intersect more closely with conventional life — things that people actually do. “The reality is that most people relate to the outdoors by doing something like going to the beach on the weekend or going on a hike,” says Wagner.

Rose and Wagner, along with the product designers behind other adolescent outdoor brands, reflect their inclusive vision through product. Instead of a $999 Himalayan climbing suit, they create puffy blankets, packable hammocks, campsite barista equipment and heaps of vibrant apparel and bags. They’re retro and new, simple and technical, versatile and capable.

And yet for all of their criticisms of the outdoor industry, neither Rose nor Wagner positions his brand in opposition to it. “Almost all of us here do some pretty serious outdoors stuff. I fish a ton, and we’re definitely not going to make a pair of waders,” says Rose. Wagner shares his attitude; “It’s not like we came out with this anti-technical-gear sentiment. Mountaineering is super-cool and mountaineers need really specific, very strong gear. But going to a music festival is not that.”

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ast fall, The North Face released a new jacket called the Ventrix. It was the brand’s first foray into active insulation — an extra-breathable, synthetic alternative to down — and it touts some serious innovation. As part of the launch, the brand created a video, compiling action clips of climbing’s brightest contemporary stars: Jimmy Chin, Alex Honnold and Emily Harrington. But there’s another face in the video that might go unrecognized by hardcore alpinists; it’s Maggie Rogers, a vocalist who went viral after a video surfaced of Pharrell Williams listening to, and being very impressed by, a single of hers titled, “Alaska.” As Chin skis toward a summit and Honnold and Harrington reach for precarious granite handholds, Rogers’s track, “Split Stones,” pulses and thrums in the background.

The North Face isn’t alone among the old guard of brands that are now adapting to a growing population of younger consumers. Salomon, a company with a long history and which regularly works closely with athletes to produce some of the most innovative and technical gear imaginable, recently rolled out a new brand strategy that revolves around its new, lighthearted tagline, “Time to Play.” And Burton, the relative elder of the still-maturing snowboard industry, has widened its offerings to include apparel, backpacks and luggage, as well as product collaborations with Red Wing and Vogue. Another Burton collaboration with Colorado-based Big Agnes produced a full collection of camping products including a sleeping bag, camp chairs and a tent, all printed with funky patterns reminiscent of another, younger outdoor brand — chalk it up to #campvibes.
The North Face’s response has been more calculated. At a superficial level, the company is adhering to its roots in mountaineering; it continues to design highly technical gear for the world’s most extreme conditions and relies on a team of elite outdoor athletes to promote the brand. “It’s the insights that come from athlete testing that influence every decision we make. Which material to use, how long a jacket is, how the hood fits, where pockets are placed,” says Jason Israel, Design Director of The North Face’s Mountain Sports division. But the Maggie Rogers Ventrix video reveals shifting sands, however subtle.

In 2015, The North Face launched a retail concept called Urban Exploration in two of its stores, one in Shanghai and the other in Hong Kong. Inside those stores was an exclusive new line of apparel and gear built for city life and designed using technical outdoor materials. The North Face continued to test the waters of streetwear in Asia for the next two years, and in 2017 the company brought a collection called the Black Series to the United States.

“The inspiration behind the Black Series product line was to take TNF’s strong DNA in performance and extend it into the urban environment,” explains Tim Sedo, Senior Brand Manager of The North Face Urban Exploration. “We developed this line because we believe that ‘outdoor’ as a category is much more than ‘the mountains’ and that we have a unique opportunity to equip people with performance-driven yet stylish products suited for urban outdoor life.” Black Series products won’t be found at REI and they’re not explicitly front-facing on The North Face’s website. But they are there, and that signals something. A slow change, maybe.

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arlier this year, style blogs erupted with fanfare when Kanye West was spotted wearing a plain black Nuptse jacket. In response, GQ hailed the Nuptse as “the perfect everyday sort of piece that’s built for sweats and sneakers and your favorite dad cap,” and “a solid-ass jacket.” Outdoor apparel continues to find its way onto the backs of movie stars and supermodels and is currently a staple on fashion runways from New York to Milan. Even Vogue.com’s Culture Editor, Alessandra Codinha, recently dubbed polyester fleece “ugly pretty” and claimed that “[her] heart belongs to the fleece.” Yes, “gorpcore” is “in,” and strappy Teva-like sandals, windbreakers and fleece are now fair game and even verging on standard fare for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.

A recent exhibition at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art titled, “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” featured 111 articles of clothing and accessories that have impacted the 20th and 21st centuries deeply enough to be displayed alongside Picasso and Van Gogh. Among the items was a red down jacket, and the plaque that accompanied it told the story of Eddie Bauer’s fateful trip into the mountains.

Why Does America Love Bass Fishing?

A

ll around the boat, Lake El Salto was waking up. A purple glow seeped over the Sierra Madres, turning the lake’s surface into a puddle of ink. Tropical birds stirred along the bank, whooping like monkeys; high above them, an eagle circled with the regularity of a drone. In the little inlet where our boat was currently parked, fish the size of saucers — tilapia, gray with flamingo-pink-mottled bellies — flipped briefly out of the water and back in, like badly skipped stones, snatching at bugs no bigger than motes of dust.

Joe Thomas and Jim Kramer ignored all that. B-roll footage at best. Too much of that kind of thing, Kramer had quipped earlier, was for nature shows, not fishing ones. If there was a story to be told here, it was under the surface, hungry for breakfast.

Which is why their eyes, and the lens of Kramer’s camera, were locked on a small piece of plastic wriggling across the surface of the lake, its underside laden with treble hooks the size of a crooked finger. Thomas reeled in this “jitterbug” topwater bait using a long, sturdy fishing rod that could double in a pinch as a spear; the reel he cranked had a high-tech drag system that reminded me of a sport’s car’s disk brakes; his braided fishing line was all but impossible to break.

“Here, fishy fishy,” Kramer muttered. A bead of sweat ran into his eye. He didn’t flinch.

And then, like a stick of dynamite blowing up just beneath the surface, a Florida-strain largemouth, the mean mother of the largemouth world, engulfed the lure. Thomas arced his back, setting the hook with a yell. “Oh my gawsh!”

Kramer’s lens was trained on the fight. But then Thomas’s excitement flagged. The fish came easily to the surface, towed in toward the boat by Thomas’s fast reeling.

“It’s a small one,” Thomas said. Kramer lowered his camera rig and wiped his brow.

A small one? That was the biggest bass I’d ever seen. But I’d come here to watch Thomas and Kramer create their Outdoor Channel show, Stihl’s Reel in the Outdoors with Joe Thomas, and to try to understand what made their 30-minute fishing stories that fans watched from the couch work. And at El Salto, one of the world’s best bass fishing lakes, the story is something straight off the old treasure map: Here there be monsters.

Producer, editor and cameraman Jim Kramer is constantly behind host Joe Thomas as he fishes, stalking the scene with his surprisingly small Sony XD camera on a shoulder mount.

Thomas is square-jawed and thickly athletic. If you need a fish caught, he’s a good guy to have around. He competed on the professional bass fishing circuit for 30 years, making a good living fishing, and once won $1 million in a single tournament. In 10 seasons and with a relatively low budget, Thomas’s show has taken anglers to untouched blackwater lagoons in the Amazon, man-made lakes in the flyover states loaded with largemouth bass, and deep sea fishing in the Florida Keys.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” Thomas said. But it was more than that. He wrote a book called Diary of a Bass Pro in 1996 that was made into a television show, Angler on Tour, combining bass fishing and reality TV just as both waves were crashing into the public consciousness. On a boat and in front of a camera, he’s a normal, level-headed guy from Ohio who also happens to have a flair for funny, goofy ebullience without coming off disingenuous. On the boat that morning at lake El Salto, Thomas told me his three keys to a great fishing show: a) be entertaining; b) choose locations that are unique and have great fishing; and c) teach the viewer something. I got the sense that he understood entertainment just as much as he did the whims of a largemouth bass.

“Here, fishy fishy,” Kramer muttered. A bead of sweat ran into his eye. He didn’t flinch.

The other half of the show, Jim Kramer, is a city slicker turned outdoorsman, thanks to the fate of the job market. He and Thomas are partners in showrunning; Kramer handles camerawork, direction, production and editing. “I try to approach it in a documentary, or almost cinema verite style,” he said. “Look, let’s see what happens. Flexibility is a good thing, especially when you’re depending on a creature with a brain the size of a peanut.”

Much of Kramer’s work is behind the scenes, but on the lake, he is constantly behind Thomas as he fishes, stalking the scene with his surprisingly small Sony XD camera on a shoulder mount. It’s tough work: physically exhausting, mentally intense, and requiring a keen eye for the bigger picture amid what is in equal parts chaotic and boring.

“Originally, fishing shows had a very passive type of filmmaking,” Kramer said. The cameraperson was almost always in a second boat, taking in the whole scene of fishing, using a zoom when necessary. “What I want to do is get close. I’m trying to look at it as a person who’d be viewing it as a fishing partner.”

“Bass fishing has so many variables and options,” Thomas said. Based on types of water and season, the techniques are endless. You just keep learning.”

I remembered that “passive” camerawork from my childhood. On Saturdays, while other fathers and sons geared up for college football, me and my dad tuned into early morning sessions of ESPN2: 23-minute segments of overly tanned men, dressed in lightweight button-down shirts and baseball caps, standing in the bows of small, high-tech motor boats, fishing.

We exulted in grainy footage of Jimmy Houston, his bright blonde bowl cut not yet adopted as the go-to styling of Hollywood’s young manic pixie dreamgirls, drawling away and kissing the bass he caught on the lips before releasing them. Jose Wejebe, the zen master and happy hippie behind The Spanish Fly, chased enormous saltwater monsters with his fly rod. Bill Dance staged slips and falls, his guest hosts guffawing till they looked like they’d keel over.

But ESPN eventually canned their outdoors coverage, replacing it with all manner of mainstream-sports talking heads. The fishing show, of course, was not gone. Its sort of entertainment, both vapid in its appeal to fishermen (guys catching fish!) and touching somewhere deep inside their souls (guys exploring every emotional and cerebral aspect of the fishing life that I adore!), simply moved to greener pastures: dedicated mediums like the Outdoor Channel, now beamed into 42 million homes throughout the US, its every aspect tailored to the outdoor life. No need to try to hook the football crowd when you’ve narrowed your audience to just guys who know what the word “tippet” means.

Yet while the forum for sharing the fishing show has honed in, the appeal of fishing itself has broadened. Last year, 45 to 50 million fishing licenses were sold in the US, making it one of the top leisure time activities in the country. Those changing demographics are reflected on Stihl’s Reel in the Outdoors. “There has always been a stereotype of some good old boys in a leaky johnboat, putting back some PBRs and catching some fish. But any more, that’s not the case,” Kramer said.

On their show, the framework centers on Thomas catching monster fish, which he does almost every episode. But the excitement comes more from Thomas himself, and his guests, whom Thomas clowns with and gets to know intimately in equal parts. There is adventure and excitement beyond just casting: In Florida, Thomas was almost thrown overboard by a huge goliath grouper; in the Amazon, he and Kramer spent hours (in the show, a few minutes) trying to navigate mangrove swamps and find an untouched fishing hole that felt more sacred than secret.

Thomas and Kramer make their money differently than other shows, too. Their main sponsors are mostly “non-endemics” that are not directly tied to fishing, like Stihl. “A lot of outdoor shows are highly commercial,” Kramer said. “I get it, but the old joke we used to tell is that when a guy gets one, it’s “Aw, get out from under that Ranger bass boat! Oh, he’s in my Evinrude outboard. Oh man, he’s got my Trilene line tangled up in my Motorguide trolling motor!”

Juan, 30, makes his living as a guide on Lake El Salto. The Mexican government flooded the valley when he was just a child to create a lake for farming tilapia; when I asked him where he grew up, he pointed to the water about 50 yards from where we were casting.

The magic of the fishing show, though, remains obscure. “We still have people who approach us and say, how do you catch all those fish in a half an hour?” Kramer said. “They’re not really aware of what goes on behind the scenes.”

The more time I spent among Joe Thomas’s biggest fans at Lake El Salto, the more I understood how such ignorance was possible. Why should the audience care what kind of cameras Kramer used, or how Thomas and Kramer mapped out their story lines and edit points? It was just like the rest of the entertainment world: it’s all about creating a good story and staying the hell out of the way.

Bass fishing is, Thomas said, the perfect sport for building an avid membership. “Bass are everywhere. You can catch bass in every state in the US except Alaska. That gives everybody an opportunity to catch them, whether that’s in a tiny farm pond or a huge river. You have variables and options. Based on types of water and season, the techniques are endless. You just keep learning.”

Fishing, like all great sports, can sink its hooks in deep. It’s as addicting as good drugs, as mesmerizing as good philosophy. It helps to remember that the greatest American novel, Moby Dick, is really just a fishing story in which the fisherman becomes so obsessed he goes mad. (Happens all the time.)

At El Salto, my first brush with the cult of bass fishing — and Joe Thomas fans — was the gang of fishermen staying at the Angler’s Inn fishing lodge along with the show’s crew. They were twanging with excitement. They were young and middle-aged and old. They were oil derrickmen and engineers and bankers. (There was one woman, a wife who had become as obsessed with bass fishing as her husband.) And they were utterly, bitterly, ass-clenchingly obsessed.

Take Bruce. Bruce was from Ohio, about 65 years old, big bifocal glasses, friendly, midwestern twang. When he fished during the day, he wore a red bass fisherman’s jersey emblazoned with sponsors.

“I first heard of Joe Thomas about 25 years ago,” he told me. “He was a local guy from Ohio, and I’m a local guy from Ohio. And so I started rooting for him in the pro circuit. He makes the great fishing he does easy to understand for dummies like me.”

I try to approach it in a documentary, or almost cinema verite style,” Kramer said. “Look, let’s see what happens. Flexibility is a good thing, especially when you’re depending on a creature with a brain the size of a peanut.”

Bruce met Thomas, who invited him to fish with his crew in El Salto. “But back then I was a family man and I didn’t have the money,” Bruce said. (Three and a half days of fishing at the Angler’s Inn, the best lodge on the lake, including food, drink, and guiding services included, costs $1,650, plus airfare.) Years later, Bruce was retired and his kids were out of the house. He met Thomas again at a local event, and Joe invited him to go fishing in Mexico. “My wife told me to go. So we saved up for a few months, and now I’m here,” he said.

Earlier that day, Bruce had caught his personal record bass. When he told me about it, I thought he might cry, he was so happy.

The bass fishing at lake El Salto has been life-altering for an entire region. The lake is actually a dammed up river that flooded a huge range of valleys, drowning everything in its way but people. Today the dead trees still litter the edge of the shoreline, their limbs reaching eerily out of the shallows.

While fishing with Thomas and Kramer, I asked our guide, Juan, 30, where he grew up. He pointed to the water about 50 yards from where we were casting.

When the Mexican government flooded the valley that is now El Salto Lake, they displaced about two villages and several graveyards. Juan said this was not a bad case of eviction: most villagers went happily, with money and supplies to build much bigger homes in the villages on higher ground 10 minutes from here. He was three when his family moved. He has one memory of his original home: being bitten by his aunt’s dog.

Today his family’s home is one of his secret spots to fish on the lake. Not bittersweet to him at all. It’s great fishing, not to mention his livelihood.

At night, all the lodge’s guests sat under the lodge’s open-air cabana, breathing in the sultry air, shooting the shit, sharing stories. Earlier in the day a storm had rolled over the Sierra Madres and exploded over the lake, dropping bolts of lightning every minute or so. All the guides and guests had fled back to the lodge, except for one boat. An older man and his son had stayed out. Now he unspooled what it was like hunkering down in the deluge, convincing the guide to stay out. He and his son had caught two monsters, one of them a ten-pounder, the ultimate prize of El Salto. He had felt so alive, out there, in danger, fighting the biggest bass of his life, he said.

A man, buzzcut and ink suggesting a biker vibe, who had stayed quiet most of the trip spoke up from the back. He understood the feeling, he said. He told a story while everyone sat still and deadly silent under the cabana.

About five years ago he had to go get a cholesterol check. His doctor asked him when he’d gotten his last physical. It had been 25 years, so the doctor demanded he give the man one. What he found was not good.

An emergency surgery followed, followed by many other surgeries, followed by a diagnosis that the man was going to die.

The man did not take the news well. Even though he had two kids and a wife, he found that nothing could keep him happy — that doctor’s voice kept ringing in his ears when he was with the people he loved, or doing the things that used to make him happy. You’re going to die, soon, he heard. What could life mean when this was where we were all headed?

The man had always wanted to get a tattoo, so he did. During the four hours it took, the pain did something nothing else had been able to do. It took his mind off of death.

He started getting more tattoos.

The tattoos helped. But six months, then a year, went on, and he had more surgeries, more bad diagnoses. There was not enough ink in the world, he realized, that could keep him going. He started planning his suicide. He told no one, but he made sure his kids would be taken care of, and he started saying goodbyes, subtly, to his friends and family.

“The secret is,” Kramer said, “Joe still really likes this. He’s having fun. The best stuff that we get is when the fishing’s really good. And he and his guests are having a good time. And they forget the camera is there.”

He went to see his nephew, who had MS — bad — but was close to graduating high school. The nephew told the man he was his hero. Because he had survived his disease and kept on fighting, the nephew knew he could survive, too.

The man did not kill himself.

He got one more tattoo, of his nephew’s portrait, on his side. Under the cabana, he pulled up his shirt to show it to everyone. Underneath it, I read the words “My strength and my courage.”

“When I ran out of space to get tattoos, and I still needed therapy to keep my mind off death,” the man said, “I started bass fishing.”

“At the end of the day,” Jim Kramer told me later, “I want a guy to be able to turn on our show, crack open a beer, and forget about the bills he has to pay or the transmission that has to be fixed. I want him to be able to take thirty minutes off and enjoy life.” That, he said, is what fishing is all about.

“People come up to me and tell me they like my show because I act normal,” Thomas told me. “They say, ‘We see you feeling bad after messing up and losing a big fish, and then when we mess up and lose a big fish, we don’t feel as bad.’” Could it be that fishing is so big that all Joe Thomas and Jim Kramer have to accomplish is being themselves and catching fish for 23 minutes? They make that look easy, sure. But could the secret to a good fishing show be so simple as the fact that fishing inherently brings its own implications about life, death and happiness to the equation?

One day, as we watched Thomas casting again and again to the same spot, Kramer told me Thomas’s secret: “He still really likes this. He’s having fun. The best stuff that we get is when the fishing’s really good. And he and his guests are having a good time. And they forget the camera is there.”

On the last full day at El Salto, Thomas and Kramer were hustling to finish their footage for the show, and the fishing was tough all of a sudden. Juan and I, casting occasionally from our boat nearby, had caught two small ones near his old home. From what I could tell, Thomas had caught only jack and shit.

Juan lifted his big crank bait out of the water and handed me a beer. “See that cross up there?” He said. I had seen it — a big white stone cross atop an island hill, in sight of the lodge. I’d figured it was something along the lines of the Virgin Mary shrine that sits atop the high cliff in the middle of the lake, where someone had said once a year men gather with 20 cases of beer to shoot off their submachine guns.

“At the end of the day,” Kramer told me later, when we’re out on the water, fishing alone, “I want a guy to be able to turn on our show, crack open a beer, and forget about the bills he has to pay or the transmission that has to be fixed. I want him to be able to take thirty minutes off and enjoy life.”

“It’s for a fisherman here, nicknamed El Tigre.” An American, he said, who’d loved the lake so much he’d requested his ashes be spread in its waters. The lodge had paid for the monument.

Five minutes later Juan had beached the boat and I’d climbed the hill, skipping from rock to rock in my crappy boat shoes, keeping an eye out for rattlers I was sure would be sunning themselves in the evening sun. At the crest of the hill I found the cross, the inscription facing the lodge and the Sierra Madres beyond. It read “August Tigre Hansch. At Peace in El Salto. 9/16/1920 – 7/23/1997.” Below the name was a fishing lure, a crank bait, embedded half into the rock like an ancient fossil.

I poured out a sip of my Pacifico for anglers that’ve gotten away. I heard a big splash and a joyous hoot down below, and scrabbled over the lee of the hill, into view of the swath of the lake, flashing its silver against the all-knowing mountains beyond. Joe Thomas and his boat were down there. Joe’s rod was bent in half. The camera was trained on him, and he was fighting a big bass.

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